Weekend Box-Office: July 2-4, 2010

WEEKEND BOX-OFFICE

No
surprise. Eclipse makes lots of $$$.

This weekend was all about two things: ECLIPSE
getting all sorts of press and THE LAST AIRBENDER getting all
sorts of negative reviews. Now that most of the hooplah is over,
let’s see what the results were. First of all, ECLIPSE made $68.5M
on Wednesday alone!! You’d think that was a record, but NEW MOON
actually made $72.7M when it opened last year, making ECLIPSE the second-best
opening-day haul ever.

The odd thing is that by the time the weekend came
around, most teen girls had probably already seen the movie, so it
"only" made another $69M over the entire weekend (about
the same amount as Wednesday alone), giving it $161M in total,
which landed it in 7th place on the all-time
list of 5-day openers (about $3M less that NEW MOON’s first 5
days). THE DARK KNIGHT still maintains that record, having made
$204M in its first five days of release. Comic book geeks beat Twi-hard
geeks! 😉

Surprisingly, THE LAST AIRBENDER, which got
verbally raped by many
critics and fans
alike, still managed to gross over $40M over the weekend, and
has made close to $60M since it was released on Thursday (the film apparently cost $150M to produce). TOY
STORY 3 finally dropped out of the top spot after a couple of
weeks there, and is now close to becoming the 2nd highest-grossing
Pixar movie of all-time (it’s made $289M so far, while UP sits in
2nd place with $293M). The #1 Pixar movie of all-time is FINDING
NEMO with $340M. If I was a betting man, I’d put my money on TOY
STORY 3 busting that record this summer as well.

No major surprises in the rest of the top 10,
although it did finally manage to surpass the same time period
from last year, as total revenues came in at $193M this past
weekend, up 19% from July 4th weekend last year. Most of that
money came from the top of the list though, which was top-heavy
this weekend, with the #8 through #10 spots barely generating $1M
each, which is pretty rare to see. The two films to get knocked
from the top 10 this weekend included KILLERS ($45M) and THE
PRINCE OF PERSIA ($88M).

Next weekend sees the re-release of the 1978
musical-movie GREASE
starring John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John (love that movie!)
but with some kind of "sing-a-long" scam that goes along
with it (limited release). The film most of us JoBlo-ers are
looking forward to, of course, is PREDATORS,
which finally opens in theaters next Friday. And finally, kids and
families will continue to be appeased by this summer’s films with
yet another animated film which opens next week entitled DESPICABLE
ME. So when you think you’ll be checking out PREDATORS? VOTE
HERE!!!

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